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How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

I would like to know how many times I could split my hives safely, so that they have the time, and the capacity to build up successful colonies.

Some commercial beekeepers I know, and work with split (all) their hives three times every year. I thought this was too much, but it works well with them. Would this require a lot (I mean a lot) of feeding?

Also, is it bad that I feed them honey from other hives? My brother works on proccessing (extracting, bottling, distributing) honey for a very large commercial beekeeper, and they have a lot of honey which they have no use for (if it gets dirty, you know). I've talked with one beekeeper and he said I should not feed my bees this honey because it will pass on diseases to them.

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

Well I'd say 3 is a good number. Then again I wouldn't split my best hives. Why not let them make honey??? I would split my dinks into 4, 4 frame nucs maybe even 5 nucs (june) per colony. I would milk off more nucs from these in july and august (swarm control as your on honey flow here). This will give you 8-15 nucs that can be over wintered. This serves several purposes. You will have tested queens that are over-winter in your area. You may use these nucs to increase, requeen, run 2 queen colonies, sell, ect. You also cull the worst colonies from your bee yards not break up your best ones. I can link Palmer and Webster vids if this is a practice u wanna persue.

As for honey; last I checked thats what bees eat. The real question is what is this commercial beekeepers practices? Does he use antibiotics to treat fouls (mask/ cover up imho)? If yes to this then no I wouldn't use his honey to feed. If you have your own honey and your confident on no diseases then use your own honey, Isn't that the honey your own bees were gonna eat anyway? With that said there are always risks in life.

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

ImaNewBeeToThis, if you are referring to splitting right after you buy the nuc, I'd recommend that would not be a good plan for a new beekeeper. Unless you specifically bought an over-wintered nuc, that nuc was likely made as a "split" not long before you got it.

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

If your goal is increase you can get 6 splits a season if you start early although some will do less and it depends on your area's nectar flows. It is important to order your queens early and from the best supplier you know of. Ordering early is important because you want your queens ready when the hives are ready. It's easy to bank queens for a week or more if the hives aren't ready but a hive that get's to swarm stage will be more difficult to manage if your queens are a week late. The slender cages will save you time when you are doing the splits and have a higher acceptance as you have no attendants in the cages. We start stimulative feeding the 1st week of February which is about 1- 2 weeks before maple bloom at our southern yards. Each hives gets a gallon of 1: 1syrup. I prefer to open feed for this as I believe the bees coming and going with syrup helps stimulate brood rearing better than our internal feeders. This gets brood rearing up and running right out of the gate. The 3rd week of March we grade our hives 1- 5. 1's being boomers, 2's and 3s (ready to split in 2 or 3 weeks respectively) 4's which are the underachievers and 5's which are queenless or drone hives. 5's get shaken out. We switch locations between 1's ands 4's to equalize the populations as by the 3rd week of March we are seeing some type of steady honey flow. We address any hive issues such as beetles, mites etc. and look at brood patterns while watching for early swarm signs such as large numbers of drone cells. The 2nd week of April or as soon as we have steady nights at 55F and above to avoid chill brood, we split into 3 single deeps. We do this by marking the orginal hive entrance location and then locating the three new hives equal distance from the orginal location about 2 feet away. We do this on a warm afternoon when the field workers are coming and going so we can watch them returning to the orginal location and orienting equally to all three hives. This is achieved by watching the foragers re-orient to hives and moving them so the incoming bees are choosing equally between the new locations. (picture a clock face with the orginal entrance as the where the hands will be centered and new nucs at 12, 4 and 8 clock for the three split and 12 and 6 for the 2 split) We wait 24 hrs and then install the new queens in the queenless splits. After 24 hours we move the hives back another 1 1/2 feet and cock the entrance 20 degrees away from the others so we have space for the next round of Two weeks later, around the 1st week of May we split the 3 orginals splits into 2 nucs each - 4 or 5 frames depending on the strenght of the hive using the same method as the we did for the 3 splits only using nuc boxes. You will have plenty of brood since you had 3 queens laying now for 2 weeks in addition to any unhatched original brood. We truck our nucs back to New York either while the queens are still caged or 7+ days after she is installed. Once in New York they we give them 48 hours to settle in and adjust and move them into deeps (and sell some) and these hives are ready for the season in singles and will have 8 or 9 frames drawn, ready for the 1st honey flow within 2 -3 weeks. Depending on the season we usually split 125 hives to between 600 and 700 nucs. We expect our nucs to still produce a full crop of honey for the season (125lb. min in our area) and make stores for winter so we set them up in 2 queen units the 1st week of June. That's a whole new fun headache you'll find in the Dadant's "The Hive and the Honey Bee" A couple of key things to keep in mind is a queen will lay 5-7 frames of brood in an early 21 day cycle, 2nd year queens if not replaced doing this are more likely to swarm at some point in the season and the night temperatures to avoid chill brood are critical during the time you are making the splits. Finally, if you use swarm cells at any point in the process expect to lose nucs and production due to delays in hatching and breeding and poorly bred or queens lost during mating.

Of course there are routine inspection to be done for queen acceptance and such during these processes.

You will need to adjust your times and expectations according to your area, nectar flows and weather. We in effect, due our yard locations, achieve a full crop flow in April, June and August September. Without those you can still support minor flows with feeding to achieve similar results.
Whatever you decide - Good Luck, have fun and let us all know how it goes!!

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

ImaNewBeeToThis.. Don't split a new nuc at all. Give it room to expand and there is little reason for it to swarm. It should have a new queen, again diminishing the urge to swarm. Build that nuc to produce honey for you.

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

Originally Posted by MikeTheBeekeeper

I would like to know how many times I could split my hives safely, so that they have the time, and the capacity to build up successful colonies.

Some commercial beekeepers I know, and work with split (all) their hives three times every year. I thought this was too much, but it works well with them. Would this require a lot (I mean a lot) of feeding?

Also, is it bad that I feed them honey from other hives? My brother works on proccessing (extracting, bottling, distributing) honey for a very large commercial beekeeper, and they have a lot of honey which they have no use for (if it gets dirty, you know). I've talked with one beekeeper and he said I should not feed my bees this honey because it will pass on diseases to them.

Thank you,
Mike

How many frames of brood covered w/ bees and corresponding number of frames of honey to go w/ them can you get out of your hive?

Re: How many times do you think I can split my hives safely?

One thing worth paying attention to (I think Mike Palmer pointed it out to me) is the age of the bees you are splitting.

There is a tendency (and don't ask how I know) to get overzealous after your first successful split...."now I can make 2 more!"

It's a bit like looking at those 3D "magic eye" posters....you want to hold the frame of bees covering brood in front of you, and focus, not on the comb, but on the thoraxes of the bees on the comb. Young bees are fuzzy here...older bees are shiny. If you are looking at a lot of shiny thoraxes, you are probably looking at somewhat older bees tending to the brood. You do not want to set these bees up to raise an emergency queen (walk away split), and you want to make sure any split you do make has plenty of young bees....if they don't, wait a couple of weeks for brood to emerge (assuming there is a lot of brood to start with...otherwise, splitting probably isn't warranted in the first place).

deknow

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